


Eye of the Storm

by barenziah



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, tbh i just wanted a fic where genji was evil and thus this fic was born
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:33:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21835246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barenziah/pseuds/barenziah
Summary: With the disappearance of his brother, Genji's life is turned upside down. His reckless and irresponsible behaviors are no longer bitterly tolerated. With their father's health declining, and Hanzo no longer there to bear the burden of becoming the heir, the pressure for the second son to become a suitable replacement is intensified to a suffocating high....In other words, Hanzo left and Genji's fuckin pissed.Set a decade into the future from Hanzo's POV
Relationships: Jesse McCree/Hanzo Shimada
Comments: 1
Kudos: 34





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I just want to preface this by saying that I'm pretty sure we're all "Fuck Blizzard" at this point but  
> 1) I've never given money to Blizzard or bought any of their games and this piece of fiction is free, therefore they're not being supported financially by me,  
> 2) I've had this fic bouncing around my head for, like, 2 or 3 years at this point and I need to get it out before it builds up in my system and kills me, and  
> 3) This is only loosely related to the game, considering the fact that all I'm doing is ripping apart canon to find the parts I like and rearranging them to make a gay collage

Hanzo sits on his knees, eyes closed, taking deep breaths in and out through his nose and trying to bury the foolish, useless thoughts that cloud his head.

The sliding door opens and someone stands just outside of it, speaking with a voice that is too steady, too unburdened by the words that pull so heavily on his heartstrings. Too solid when Hanzo feels as if he's mere moments away from falling apart.

"There is no sign of him. We thought we had a lead, but it turned out to be a dead end. Unfortunately, our guests managed to cover their tracks very well."

Some part of Hanzo, deep inside, cracks. He begins to laugh, softly at first, but it quickly becomes desperate and hysterical as he runs a shaky hand through his hair.

"Young master?" the voice, now concerned, reaches him through his laughter. A hesitant step is taken closer to him, but he puts up a hand to signal them to stop. His laughter fades, and with it goes his patience. A sudden need to be alone roars inside his chest. They do not get to see the way he breaks apart. Their presence feels like an intrusion.

"Get out," he rasps, the venom he injects into his tone ensuring that he need not ask again. 

The door slides shut, leaving him alone in the darkness. Silence settles into every corner of the room, becoming more stark and suffocating with every passing moment.

Seconds tick by. Minutes. Hours? Who knows. Hanzo's thoughts are nothing short of racing. All of the unanswered whys and what-ifs buzz all around him, cling to him, sink into his skin, biting and raging and demanding to be known. His head is spinning; he hunches over, hyperventilating, his fingernails carving c-shaped marks into his arms, everything screaming and building and crashing against him until--

"Where is he?!" the dragon roars. The thunderstorm outside, clashing and whirling, spitting stinging rain onto anyone unfortunate enough to be caught underneath the darkened skies, reflects the turmoil in the young heir's heart.

He stands and paces the floor, hearing the pitter-patter of footsteps and calls of "Where did he go? -- He can't have gotten far," over the howling wind.

After several strides, the door is opened again and someone stands a few feet away, body still in contrast to his own, which is pacing and stopping only to turn around and pace in the other direction. When the figure speaks, it is his brother's voice that he hears, full of sympathy and soft with concern.

"We can't find him. He has left no trace."

Hanzo stops in his tracks, eyes wide and blood rushing harshly through his ears like ocean's waves. Nothing feels real, not even the hand that's now touching his shoulder.

The young man growls, equal parts frustrated at the normally ostentatious cowboy's unexpected ability to hide from assassins trained in espionage and disgust at himself for being so weak, for needing someone so much.

"Find him! I don't care what it takes! Find him and bring him to me."

With that, he falls to his knees, his frustrated shout drowned out by a clap of thunder.

And suddenly, the anger is gone. The all-encompassing rage, blazing and burning, leaves him hugely empty. The compassion in Genji's eyes is no longer there, making him feel so much colder. The fear he sees in them only serve to remind him of what a monster he is. He wishes he could crawl out of his skin. Too proud for an apology, but still feeling remorse, Hanzo looks away and says with a voice raw and rough like sandpaper, "Leave me alone."

And so he does, sliding the paper door shut behind him. Now alone for good, the weight of the situation hits him, all too heavy, all at once. It knocks the wind out of him, makes him drop to his hands and knees.

Oh god, he's gone, he's really, really gone. His cowboy, his sunshine, the distraction he desperately needs in his dreary life. Without that breath of fresh air, how could he handle the pressure of an entire clanhood hanging over his head.

Hanzo knows he needs to get up, knows he needs to numb his feelings and carry on as if nothing has happened. But his heart is gone now, told never to return, and how could he continue with such a gaping wound in his chest?

No one is around now, which is a great relief, because he looks pathetic on all fours, crying and leaning closer to the floor as he lets out an agonized croak. He allows a drawn-out wail escape his lungs, a drop of spittle joining the puddle of tears left underneath him as he drops his forehead to touch the floor. He sobs, shaking violently, a small eternity stretching on and on, until the tears stop and he rolls onto his side, expression blank and feeling impossibly raw and empty.

"It's all his fault," Hanzo thinks numbly. If Jesse McCree had never entered his life, had never shown him how beautiful the world could be, he could have danced this dance forever. He could have lived his bleak, gray existence with nothing keeping him going except duties and expectations and so much pressure that he felt as though he were deep underwater, trapped with no hope of breathing-- he could have handled all of it, if only that blasted cowboy hadn't filled his life with color. If only Jesse hadn't breathed air into his worn-out lungs.

Whoever said it was better to have loved and lost was a _fool_. Hanzo would do anything to forget all of it, to fill his empty chest with concrete and allow himself to sink all the way to the bottom of the ocean.

Get up, a voice within him urges. He needs to pick himself up and fit back into his old life like a puzzle piece falling obediently back into place. But how can he do so, asks another voice, small and timid, now that the picture has warped? How can he force himself to fit when his edges are now so different from what they're expected to be?

He shakes away the despair threatening to swallow him whole. Pathetic! This display is _pathetic_. He survived without Jesse before, and he will continue to do so. His heart pulses painfully at the thought, but he pushes the feeling aside.

Hanzo picks himself up off the floor, faces the door, and stops. He doesn't know how long he stands there, staring into space, thinking and feeling nothing. On the outer edges of his mind there is static, making everything fuzzy. The edges of his vision blur as if he were in a dream. He knows he's moving, knows he's packing, knows he's outside, knows he's walking.

How many times has his little brother talked about running away? The number count must be in the hundreds by now. He cannot recall how many plans he's had to listen to over the years. He's aware of how much Genji wants to live free, how he's only able to handle it because Hanzo's taking the brunt of Father's expectations -- which Genji always says with a grin to show he's joking.

The elder dragon is unable to feel anything at the moment, blunted by his current trance, which is why the pang of guilt he's sure he'd feel if he could in fact feel anything, doesn't stop him. His feet continue to move one after the other, listening not to a voice in his head but instinct - primal and unfathomable and coming from a place within him that existed before words - pulling him towards a goal he cannot see.

Months pass by like minutes in a haze, unclear, like a pair of eyes unfocused. Hanzo has nowhere to go, no purpose. He made the decision to leave while not thinking clearly, but there was no way he could go back. He would rather die than return to that life.

In all likelihood, they would refuse to even consider taking him back, and attempt to take his life instead. The Shimada clan does not take kindly to deserters. So he moves forward.

Time slips steadily through Hanzo's fingers like water. Minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. At first he tries to catch it, close his fist around it so he can hang on to some semblance of sanity. But then he realizes that it's as futile as trying to count out the grains of sand that pass to the bottom half of an hourglass. So he stops counting.

Each day is spent floating through town after town, wandering aimlessly until his energy runs out, exhausting him not only physically but mentally as well. After resting, he starts the morning with the sun behind him, still tired and yearning for his lost love, the warmth at his back giving him energy until the evening. In this way, the cycle continues.

Eventually, he runs out of money, out of food, out of options. He has no place to stay. The soles of his shoes have worn too thin for comfort. His limbs ache. His muscles scream with the need for rest. For now, though, he needs to find the funds to secure himself a place to sleep.

After searching for ages and making conversation with insufferable people, the man finds himself with a wanted poster in hand, and the epiphany hits him, glowing bright as the sun. The skills he honed growing up in the Shimada clan are perfect for finding someone and bringing them to justice. He doesn't particularly care about the morals of the situation, or whether they have circumstances in which their actions that got them a bounty were actually justified. All he cares about is that this is something he can do, and something he can do _well_.

With renewed purpose, the young dragon throws himself into this new career, tracking down runaways and outlaws and building up a reputation for himself. Years trickle by as he searches and he finds, all with the idea of finding Jesse constant in the back of his mind.

After collecting a number of years' experience, Hanzo finds himself in a small desert town, one not even large enough to be located on a map. Hanzo doubts if it even has a zip code. He looks around, searching for the "waterin' hole," one local called it. Slang for a bar where patrons can slake their thirst like animals in the savannah. He's run out of clues on his latest target, and he's wondering if he can't pick up a lead in this podunk dustbowl.

The most talkative locals often show up to concerts and other such festivities, and with a town this small and not much else to do, he is sure he can find a gossip willing to tell him whatever he needs to know.

Hanzo walks down the road to get to the town square, taking note of the buildings -- they're made of adobe to keep the buildings cool. They're often rounder than what he's used to seeing and colorfully painted. If he had more of an artistic eye, he might stop and take in his surroundings, but there is a bounty out there that is his to collect.

What he finds -- or rather, what finds him-- is nothing like what he is expecting. A familiar laugh, clear as day, cuts through the din that fills the town square, as if its whole purpose is to strike through Hanzo's body like lightning. Moving his head to look in that direction takes him a few seconds, body paralyzed and eyes wide. He tells himself to look, look, just turn your head, see if it's really him. The one he's been searching for for years now, given up on finding a thousand times only to pick up the search again the following day.

He doesn't move like he wants to, not until he hears that accursed southern drawl the same one that makes his heart _ache_.

Hanzo stands up -- and, he admits, his hands are shaking just a bit -- and begins to make his way over, taking Storm Bow into his hand, hoping that if his feet are quick enough, then his mind won't be able to catch up enough to talk him out of it.

The man in question stands several feet away, back turned to Hanzo, making conversation with someone else and reacting with animated movements, exaggerated like a cartoon. He wears a hat (ten-gallon, obnoxious) and doesn't hear the other's footsteps taking him closer.

Hanzo nocks an arrow to the bowstring, not drawing the bow but still aiming it at the man, and clears his throat. The man in the hat turns around while the other person turns pale and runs away, leaving him to deal with this matter himself.

It really is him. Hanzo feels dizzy, his eyes blurring as if unable to comprehend the sight before him -- his stubborn mind, so set on preserving the only instance of Jesse he could carry with him all these years, is unable to syncretize a ghost of the past with the real thing here in front of his eyes.

He's changed so much. It takes Hanzo's breath away.

The archer has imagined this moment so many times he's lost count, but not once did he expect it to actually happen. He doesn't know how he feels in this moment; there are too many thoughts racing through his head, different fears and desires swirling and threatening to overtake him, his tongue turned to lead with all the unsaid words that have built up over the years. If he were anyone else in the world, he might have entertained the notion of leaving or giving in to desires carried over from the past, but Hanzo's modus operandi has always been to face things head-on, and to do them the right way. He sees things through to the end, and this is no different.

He steels himself, looks Jesse in the eyes with a fiery intensity of his own, and says with a strong, clear voice, "Jesse McCree, you have a 60 million dollar bounty, and I am hereby placing you under arrest."

Hanzo won't admit it, but he's searching those eyes for any sign of recognition. Anything at all.

He finds none, and buries the subsequent surge of emotion that follows.

Jesse smirks and puts his hand on his hip, the movement pulling up the serape covering him, showing that the cowboy's hand is ever so close to the gun he's carrying in the holster on his hip, fingers twitching with the promise of a challenge. Hanzo rolls his eyes. There is no way Jesse could draw his gun before he could fire an arrow into his throat. His bluff will not work.

"Now, now, you gotta take me out to dinner first before I let you break out the toys."

Hanzo sputters. "Be serious. Do you not understand the situation you are in? For years I have been hunting you."

Jesse scoffs. "You and about a hundred other people. 60 million dollars goes a long way. I got a lotta hunters on my tail, and I can't keep track of every one of 'em. But kudos to you for sneakin' up on me. Ain't every day that someone manages to catch me off guard. I'd like to shake your hand."

Jesse, against common sense, holds his hand out for the other to take, eyes bright and welcoming. Hanzo looks down at it for a split second, face twisted in confusion.

"Well go on now, it ain't gonna bite ya."

Hanzo returns the arrow to its quiver before taking his hand and squeezing it, eyebrows furrowing.

"What's the matter," Jesse asks as they let go, "never shook anyone's hand before?"

"This… is not how I expected this confrontation to go."

"Sounds like you gotta learn to roll with the punches." Jesse ends his sentence with a wink, and Hanzo's heart definitely does _not_ skip a beat at the sight.

Hanzo furrows his brow. "Do not… do that."

Just then, Hanzo hears the sound of shoes hitting the ground as if from a great height in the same instance he sees Jesse's eyes flick to a spot over his shoulder. Wordlessly, an arm extends over Hanzo's shoulder to present a blade that stops short at the cowboy's throat.

Hanzo spots the tattoo on the person's wrist of a snarling dragon peeking out from underneath a black sleeve. Judging from the tattoo and the fact that he wasn't able to detect their presence up until this point, they could very well be a member of the Shimada clan.

A raspy voice, heavy with years of smoking, greets them. "Follow me."

The finality in said voice, as well as the blade and probability that this person has brought backup, ensure that neither of them question the command.

The blade is returned to its sheath and the two of them are led through a dark alleyway barely wide enough for them to fit through and into a seemingly abandoned building which is crumbling to pieces and covered in ivy. The person they follow stops at a door inside the building, unlocks it, and gestures for them to enter. When they do, the door is closed behind them.

Inside the room, there are two seats opposite a desk with a window beside the furniture, and not much else. Hanzo notes that this room, despite the window, has not been aired out or dusted in quite a long time.

"Please, sit," a voice sounds from behind the desk. The two guests turn their heads to face it. A man sits behind it, all too familiar.

"Hello, Hanzo," the man replies, voice sickeningly sweet, obvious in its irony. "Long time no see."

Hanzo sits in the nearest chair, staring ahead. At first, he can't believe the situation he finds himself in. His eyes sweep over the face he hasn't seen in over a decade. Genji's brown eyes, now narrowed in contempt, glow honey-gold in the light of the sunset. A half-mask decorated with cartoonishly long fangs covers the bottom half of his face. On his eyebrow sit two scars, mere centimeters apart and almost uniform in length, resembling the bite of a serpent. His hair is no longer an eye-straining bright green, but still slicked back like he used to do when they were young.

"So, how have things been for you, dear brother?" he begins, tone accusatory. "Life must have gone well for you without the weight of an empire on your shoulders."

Guilt twinges in Hanzo's chest, a bitter and heavy thing he has been carrying with him all these years. Leaving his younger brother to be crushed under the weight of the Shimada clan is the last thing he wanted.

"You left me there to live a life I never wanted so you could chase after that stupid cowboy you dated for what, a month?"

Brown eyes dance over to Jesse's tawny visage, the amusement in them plain to see. "Ah, and I see you've found him! I understand now. You two ran off to go play honeymoon while the rest of us had no choice but to stay and clean up the mess you made after your little tantrum."

Hanzo grimaces, face turning red with indignation. "That is _not_ \--"

Genji holds up a hand, eyes flicking back over to him. "And now that I've grown to become comfortable with this life, you're starting to pick it all apart at the seams. You are nothing but a thorn in my side."

The younger dragon leans back in his chair before turning back to look at Jesse.

"Why don't you sit, cowboy? Surely you have had a long day of… wrangling cattle." The last two words are spat out harshly.

It's obvious by his body language that he would rather not sit, but they don't have much room to argue in this situation. Jesse takes the open chair closest to the window.

Genji looks back at his brother before he leans forward and cradles his chin in his hands.

"But really, I should be thanking you, Hanzo." His eyes are crinkled, holding unbridled contempt even though his voice holds a smile within it.

Hanzo furrows his eyebrows. "Thanking me," he mirrors in a flat tone, perplexed.

"If you hadn't run, I would have had no reason to track you down. You see, I've honed my skills considerably as the leader of our family's clan, and I've demanded no less from my subordinates. Taking out the prodigy, the unmatched archer, the great and talented Hanzo Shimada, will bring untold amounts of fear, respect, and loyalty not only to me, but to my clan as well. And that is why…"

Genji raises a hand.

Several things happen in quick succession. Jesse winces, putting a hand up to his ear just as Hanzo hears some sort of high-pitched screech -- feedback from an earpiece, perhaps. Genji moves his hand down. Jesse tackles Hanzo. The window shatters as a bullet hits the now-empty spot Hanzo had occupied a split second ago. Jesse bellows out, "Quick, move!" before his hand has a death grip on Hanzo's forearm and is dragging him across the room. Jesse shoulders the door and it opens with a loud noise. Genji yells after them, "You can't just make things easy for me, can you, brother?"

Hanzo has a hard time processing all of this. A minute ago, he was having an… admittedly tense and awkward conversation with two people he hasn't seen in the better part of a decade. The conversation had gradually gotten more and more obvious in the fact that any and all future ones would not be cordial to say the least, but Hanzo could distance himself and drown himself in denial. Now he has no excuse.

His own brother just tried to murder him in cold blood.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK SO! To start off with, I know this chapter's word count doesn't match last chapter's, but it's been 9 and a half months when I promised myself I wouldn't make y'all wait that long so here's what I'm gonna do: if next chapter's word count is higher, I'll fill out this one more and if it's lower, I'll split the first one into two chapters.  
> Also I'm in the middle of writing a dabihawks band au that's written in a different tense than this one (which I promised myself I wouldn't post until it was done so that I could avoid long pauses in between chapters) so if the tense changes, that's why. This fic is super unbeta'd  
> Also also, I changed the summary, so if it looks different to you now, that's why
> 
> Happy Halloween everybody

With the wind at their backs and adrenaline pumping through their bloodstreams, the pair take off down an alley. When they must make a turn, they make it, and they run straight until they must make another turn. The first thing Hanzo notices is that the alleyways take so many turns and seem so endless that they're reminiscent of a labyrinth. The second thing he notices is that the hand still wrapped around his arm is warm and strong. His heart pulses painfully in his chest.

The two make it to the middle of the town square, where people move and flow like ocean's waves crashing on the shore. Hanzo figures they're as safe as they'll ever be and relaxes just a bit, content to wait here and catch his breath. Jesse continues to search the alleys and rooftops with his eyes, ever vigilant.

Jesse, still holding onto him, turns to him and speaks, voice smooth and unhurried as molasses. "I know a great little place to unwind. Follow me."

Hanzo quirks an eyebrow. Jesse doesn't respond, just gives a smirk that says 'humor me' before gently leading him through the crowd and moving through the door into the establishment. 

Hanzo's eyes sweep over the premises, taking in as much detail as they can. First off, the place is… very American. Ten-gallon hats used as decoration, brightly colored displays with lots of exclamation points describing 20-dollar drinks, people standing up and doing something he'd heard of called line-dancing. 

The place is also very filthy; the floor looks like it hasn't been swept or washed in ages, and has peanut shells scattered all about. He steps on enough crushed peanut shells to know that the excess of them must be intentional.

The other customers are overly loud and surly, arguing about something Hanzo doesn't care enough about to listen to. A fight breaks out between two patrons, one of them tackling the other to the ground before Jesse's feet. Without missing a beat, Jesse steps over both of them. Hanzo follows suit.

They find themselves at an unoccupied booth in the back of the bar, sitting across from each other. It's almost surreal, being able to sit and talk with Jesse like this again. He chatters away with the exact same nonchalant energy he had all these years ago, calm and friendly. Hanzo keeps his answers minimal, only a word or two at most, but he is unsure if it is a defense mechanism or because his social skills are rusty after years of being alone.

The conversation lulls and Jesse takes off his hat, letting it rest on the table while he runs a hand through his hair. "Well, I ain't gonna talk your ear off all night, lemme get us some drinks so we don't have to catch up stone-cold sober. What's your poison?"

When he stands up, Hanzo holds up a hand. "I will go." Jesse sits back down.

"Whiskey on the rocks," he says with a wink and a finger gun.

"Understood."

Hanzo goes up to the bar and orders. While the drinks are being poured, he looks back at the cowboy. He's not wearing his famous grin, and the lines around his eyes show his age. He's bouncing his leg, biting his nails and looking around at all the happenings around him as if afraid to cease his constant vigilance.

With a pang to his heart, Hanzo wonders what he's gone through in all the time they've lived without each other. He feels a strange sense of loss, as if a part of his mind had somehow felt entitled to sharing a life with him. He feels the need to remind his subconscious -- which, evidently, is as obstinate as he himself is -- that the days where they belonged to each other were long gone, and it makes no sense to try and cling to them now.

Hanzo pays for the drinks, leaves a tip, and brings them back to the booth, placing them on the table before taking a swig of his. It burns on its way down.

They rest in silence, uncomfortably at first, but somewhere in between the drinks they've decided to keep flowing and the need to fill the silence, they begin to exchange anecdotes. Jesse tells his first, something involving a miscommunication that breaks the ice.

Hanzo feels his tense muscles relax and finds himself warmed by Jesse's brown eyes, turned red by the sunset through the window behind him.

He is beautiful like this. Red always was his color.

But of course, Hanzo is not thinking about that now.

Soon enough, after Jesse's story ends, Hanzo thinks of one of his own to tell, a strange occurrence that had stuck in the back of his mind all this time. Jesse barks out a laugh, a deep and gritty sound. Hanzo is glad to hear it. He feels something long-forgotten well up within him and soften his features. It feels a lot like fondness.

As the story is drawn to a close, Jesse laughs and takes off his hat in order to run a hand through his hair, tilting back against the cushioned seat. He has a dreamy look in his eye, as if he can't believe this is actually happening. Like if he stops aiming his charming grin and twinkling eyes that this moment will fall away in a panicked haze to reveal it was a dream the entire time. 

But obviously, Hanzo is just reading into it. 

Hanzo can only take a few more moments of that golden gaze before he looks down into his drink and lets his smile fade slowly.

When he looks back up, Jesse looks deathly serious. "Now, Hanzo, I've enjoyed getting reacquainted and all, but I'm afraid it's a more serious talk. What are you fixin' to do about that brother of yours? He ain't happy with you."

The cowboy swirls his whiskey around, the ice clinking against the edges of the glass, before downing the rest of it.

A shadow of guilt passes over the elder Shimada's face. He pauses for just a moment before answering. The reason why he started working against his old clan is because once he was on the outside, he realized it was corrupt and that the world would be better off without it. So he began putting a stop to all of the operations he caught wind of. 

"No, he isn't. I have taken it upon myself to sabotage the machinations of my former clan." 

Jesse whistles. "So needless to say, you cut ties with them, and now they don't like you much."

Hanzo nods silently, eyebrows furrowed. "I have been successful in snuffing out several branches of my clan throughout my travels, but I admit I have avoided returning to Hanamura in the past.

"To avoid your brother," Jesse supplies. 

It's not a question. Hanzo's face twists into a scowl; he feels shame and disappointment in the fact that he hadn't had the courage to face the life he passed off to someone else.

It might be the alcohol turning his brain to swirling mush every time he moves his head, but he does one thing he never expected to: open up.

"I thought I could carry that weight for the rest of my life. I thought it was my duty to shoulder the burden of everyone else's expectations, regardless of whether or not I wanted something more."

"Well, you know what they say: heavy hangs the head that wears the crown."

"Indeed." 

"So what made you start to think differently?"

Hanzo looks at him, scrutinizing, searching his face for any sign that Jesse is mocking him or already knows the answer to that question. When he finds nothing, his gaze falls upon the dark mahogany of the table.

"That is not important."

All Jesse knows is that he left; he doesn't need to know exactly when and for what reason. Mercifully, the cowboy doesn't press any further and instead stretches out, arms resting on the back of the plush seat behind him.

"Well, layin' low ain't an option anymore, if the way he acted when we met's anything to go by."

Hanzo snorts. "No, I don't think the sniper shot through the window was an act of friendliness."

Jesse laughs low, then stops and traces his hand over the pattern the wood grain in the table makes. Over it sits a layer of glossy varnish that reflects white from the light above them. He takes a deep breath to steel himself, and the smile that crinkles his eyes fades gradually into a serious look. 

"Hanzo, where are you goin' after this?"

Hanzo, if in a state of sobriety, could probably come up with a good lie, or a halfway decent lie that he could back up with enough conviction that no one would question him. Drunk Hanzo, however, just stares.

Jesse points to the entrance. "'Cause they ain't waitin' for us to get comfy. They're comin' whether we're ready for 'em or not. So what's your plan now? Can't have nowhere to go with that lunatic on your tail."

"I suppose that is true, but I plan on doing what I have always done: pass from place to place and figure out the rest as the need arises."

"That don't sound like the safest option."

"'Safe'?" Hanzo scoffs. "This life has never been safe. And look-- I am still alive."

"Bein' cocky is a good way to get yourself killed."

"Cockiness and confidence are two different things; I simply do not underestimate myself. That is all."

The cowboy takes his hat off the table and fiddles with the rim, looking sheepish. "If nothing comes to mind, I have a suggestion. But… you gotta keep an open mind."

At Hanzo's raised eyebrow, he continues. "I'm part of a certain organization. Have been since I was seventeen. They can keep you safe, Han. But they ain't charitable enough to do it for free."

"So you mean the price I will have to pay is…"

"Membership. We take care of our own. But they won't let you stay on base unless you're one of us."

For a few breathless moments, Hanzo sits completely still, just staring, looking for all the world like a deer caught in headlights. The first, most immediate and strongest response is the urge to say no, distance himself, figure out the rest later. A panic response forged by years on the run. But even though the alcohol, he realizes this is the best option; it's the only one he has, really. 

Still, the idea of working with Jesse is… daunting to say the least. By his side, every day, able to see him and talk to him and spend downtime with him… This is all too much to take in. Does Jesse even want the same thing? Does he even recognize him? How stupid would it be to fall for him again just to find out Jesse has no idea who he is?

Slowly, as if afraid to scare him off, Jesse reaches out his hand for a handshake. Hanzo swallows his trepidation and shakes the cowboy's hand. "If it is our best option, then we have a deal."

Jesse gives him a bright, toothy grin and as they pay and rise to leave, Hanzo wonders how long it will take for him to fall apart completely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good news and bad news:
> 
> Good news:  
> \- I've finally settled into my new place and therefore have more time to write  
> \- I have chapter three partially done. I'm not done typing it up yet but I'm guessing a good 40% of it is good to go  
> \- I now have a chapter outline and a better idea of how I want this fic to end, meaning (hopefully) faster update times 
> 
> Bad news:  
> \- I don't have my computer so typing all this up on my phone is gonna be a bitch and may slow me down  
> \- I have no idea where like half of my written notes are because I had to move and then had to move again which may or may not include stuff for this fic so I'm kind of scrambling to try and find everything again
> 
> We'll see how it goes.


End file.
